I donâ€™t normally use original score. I donâ€™t trust any composer to do itâ€¦ The music is so important. The idea of paying a guy and showing him your movie at the end and then he comes over it; I would never give anybody that kind of responsibilityâ€¦I have one of the best soundtrack collectionsâ€¦ Thatâ€™s how I write it, thatâ€™s how I design it; I go into my soundtrack collection and I start visualizing the sequencesâ€¦I cut out the composers. I work with the best composers, Ennio Morricone, Lalo Schifrin, John Berry[sic]â€¦but I donâ€™t deal with them.

Well, now, I am a composer, so my opinion is biased but here is what I find funny about his attitude:

This film music he proudly collects and apparently uses was written by film composersafter the film, exactly the way he avoids working.

I’ll be honest, I find his statement somewhat self-contradictory. I mean, based on his apparent love of film music that came from a certain way of working, I would expect him to adopt this method of adding music to a film, rather than avoid it.

Could it be ego making that decision?

Personally, I see film music as part of the story-telling, part of the movie’s identity. Patching up a score from other sources just seems like making a Frankenstein monster if you ask me.

I just completed a dialogue scene which had a difficult mix of moods to navigate; emotional discussion/sharing of wisdom interspersed with some slap-stick humour. It was tough, but I pulled it off.

Another thing I wanted to write about here was pacing. It something i am very conscious of and that makes a good score a great score, in my opinion, and something John Williams is a master of.

Right now I am still working on the the opening act of the film so I am writing in a specific way to support that:

Avoiding being too big with the music. The big moments are at the end so the music needs to wait for that â€“ to a certain degree.

No magical textures in the orchestra. The magic is in the second act, so right now I am using more urban sounds: rock, Chinese traditional, city feel like Gershwin meets Shanghaiâ€¦ sort of.

Being more melodic as I lay down the main themes. Thatâ€™s what John Williams does in Harry Potter, he presents the themes often in the first act. This helps give an opening feel to the story-telling and also makes the theme stick in the memory more. After that, I will incorporate them in other cues, but more as leitmotives that are sprinkled over a different melodic structure.

I am avoiding the magical textures because I do not have an foreshadowing opportunities. Itâ€™s sort of like Back to the Future; the orchestra only rolls out along with the DeLorean, when the film changes tone completely. Before that plot point there is no orchestra at all.

In my film, the first act presents the protagonist and we do not expect that he will be taken on this journey into another world. (Well, I guess you do because I am providing spoilers hereâ€¦ ah well.)

Actually, I am lying hereâ€¦ I do foreshadow! The main theme that occurs over an areal shot ofÂ 19th Century London is something I designed to come back as a hero theme in the end.

I havenâ€™tâ€™ seen the end, though, so I hope it works out! I am sure it will be fine.

OK, you are a filmmaker and getting ready to listen to a cue from your composer. This is not an easy thing and many filmmakers listen to demos the wrong way.

Here are some important things to remember as you listen.

1. This is a demo

As a filmmaker, how do you listen to a demo?

Listen to the melody and the mood, not the quality of the recording. Clarity and expression will come later, as will live instruments to sweeten, or even better, a live recording date. Trust that the polish will come.

Demos are like layouts in animation (stick figures walking through a gray world) when compared to using live instruments.

You can discuss instrument choices, density of textures and anything that is pertinent to the story-telling and the mood of the scene. You will not be able to get in your composer’s head and imagine what the final cue will sound like, so you have to take that leap.

Once a cue is approved, it is fine to ask how close to final the cue is and what work is left to do on it.

2. Take the cue in context

Consider the music that comes before and after. Just like scenes and other story elements, music is experienced in the context of what precedes it and what comes after.

For example; the start of a film can have lighter, slower music which on its own might appear too slow. But the musical plan is pick up the pace and intensity gradually from cue to cue, creating a great buildup that would have been impossible had it started too fast too soon.

Consider the cue’s place in the story. This is related to the first point, but while that was from a musical point of view, we must always consider the story and the effect the cue will have on the story-telling.

The story should have an arc, so should the music. For example; the first action scene should sound different than the last. If the music is the same for all action sequences, it homogenizes the story and creates no sense of forward momentum.

So consider a cue in the context of what will happen later or earlier in the story.

Consider other audio elements. Are there sound effects to be added later that are not present in this rough cut? Perhaps the music feels too thin and piercing, or even drops out to make room for the explosion all together. That’s a good thing but may feel empty when you listen on its own.

Share your thoughts: Any other ideas and considerations for filmmakers to properly assess a demo? Leave a comment.

{This blog post comes from my website blog where I am keeping of diary of my work on an animated feature film. You can view this blog here.}

Alright! I have been waiting for this day since I signed on to this project! Time to write some orchestral underscore!

This project will have advantages and challenges that are specific to working in animation: namely that I will have a very generous schedule to work with, but that I will be writing without seeing all of the film first.

On some animation projects you get to see an animated story board, or even story board, but so far I have only seen the character designs, some stills (like the one above) and read the script four times.

So I have to turn to the script for the architecture of the score right now. This is fine, because Neil and Chrisâ€™ script is very, very solid.

Architecture?

By architecture I mean; what characters, things and events will have themes, where will the themes appear, how will these themes develop and be used, and how will they relate to each other and to the story. That sort of thing!

The themes have to fit the characters as well, so I must understand the characters, their motivations and their function within the story.

And that is exactly what I did today, which gave me a nice detailed list, which looks like this.

16 distinct musical sections

10 character themes

11 other themes

With this list I will not overlook anything!

And now time to start writing! Well, almostâ€¦ first I am going to soak up some music.

Writing awesome, memorable themes is an important goal! and something I continually wish to improve at.

To that end I will be listening to and analyzing some melodic models from classical music, songs, and film music by the likes of John Williams, Mancini and those guys who really knew how to do it.

Other orchestral music I will listen to this week to build the sound world of the film will come from the usual suspects: Ravel, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Grieg, Liszt, Bartok, Dukas, Lutoslowasky, and of course, John Williams.

On the playlist is also Chinese traditional music, since it is a big part of the story. (Although the director does not want a big, Chinese sound to the film. Just a hint of it in certain parts.)

I do this kind of work for every project, but in this case, this groundwork means that I will have my musical materials ready so I can hit the ground running when I start getting scenes to score, which will be any day now!

I am reminded of the great relationship of trust that Fellini had with his composer Nino Rota. They had a unique style of working, I think. Fellini would sit on the piano stool with Rota as Rota played some melodies. Fellini rejected many of them and often, just as it seemed that nothing was working, Rota would play another melody and Eureka! There it was, the melody they were searching for.

It seems to me that this is a great way to find what you need in an organic way. Perhaps this is not to every directorâ€™s taste, nor to every composerâ€™s, either, but it certainly worked for them, and attests to the great trust that Fellini had for Rota.

I remember seeing a video of Angelo Badalamenti explaining how he came up with the love theme for “Twin Peaks” with David Lynch by his side. Here it is.

This reminds me of a director-actor relationship.But is this a good way of working? Overall, I would say yes.

Here are some thought and some suggestions.

A melody is not usually perfect upon first draft. I am reminded of Beethoven working out his “Ode for Joy.” In his notebooks there are many, many revisions of the themes as he worked out the details, some seeming very minor, but all necessary to reach that balance, that seeming easy perfection. This is difficult to achieve off the cuff. If Beethoven had to work it out like this, so will everyone else.

Improvisation can be one of two things: Regurgitation or experimentation. When a musician improvises he will either play variations on what he knows, which will be safe and not truly new, or try new things or make lots of mistakes on the way to discovery. Keep that in mind.

The piano is not an orchestra. A melody may seem wrong played on the piano if it is meant for voice or another instrument. If you choose to sit by your composer as he plays the music on the piano, you will have to imagine all that is missing and that is a challenge. Actually, you will not be able to do it, and it will require trust in your composer for sure. (See previous post.)

So just focus on mood and if you like the melody, the sounds, that is the way to go.

But the good thing is that the composer is not expected to create a full orchestral rendering of a melody or cue, and that is a very, very good thing! Making a high-quality orchestral sequence is very time consuming and to be able to avoid that and go straight for the approval of the theme, that is fantastic time saver and stress-reducer for the composer. For that reason alone I would choose this method of working.

The last project I worked on was a film musical and we approached the writing in a similar fashion. The director would come to my studio, and when there was no melody to work with, I would sit at the piano and improvise as he reacted. (My improvisations were based on his descriptions of the scenes, character and other pertinent story elements.)

Once we had something that was on the right track, I would often have to work it out as he sat there, playing with his iPhone, waiting for me to be done.

Once completed, I would play the fine-tuned melody and chords and it was always perfect! Easy! He would then leave and I would work out the orchestration and the sequence and record it.

Then one day the director got sick with a nasty cold, so we did the same thing but via Skype. This went very well, as he was able to hear everything and respond in exactly the same fashion as before.

Once he got well, we just continued doing the melody writing via Skype until the project was done since it saved him lots of time in transit and allowed me to turn off Skype and work out the details of the tune by myself, which was better for both of us.

So this Fellini-Rota approach can now be done even if the composer and director are not in the same room, state or country! Thank you, internet!

In conclusion, I would say that this approach is a good one although not suited for everyone, every project or every cue in a film. This will make the composer more secure in his choices, reduce guess-work, save precious time and it will show in the quality of the music.

Trust that comes from good relationships is important in achieving great scores, as Mr. Fenton explains perfectly.

Trust between a composer and director goes both ways. The composer will be more creative if he feels that the director trusts him, and trust is not just something you say, it is something you show.

But the composer needs to earn and maintain that trust.

However, if you hire a composer, I would suggest that as a director you should come in with an attitude of trust by default. I mean, hopefully you had a good reason to hire him in the first place!

And if things don’t go smoothly at the outset, don’t panic, don’t pull the plug or start micro-managing. It is during rejection that it is the most crucial to show the composer that his contribution is valued, that you trust his ideas, as you both continue on this journey to find the right music for this film.

You can learn a lot about the power of music in film by looking at the smallest, most seemingly inconsequential scenes in a film.

For my first Scene Analysis I will look at a short scene in E.T.

But before I begin, I would like you to read this fabulous quote from Hugo Friedhofer, golden age composer, taken from the book “Music Scoring for TV & Motion Pictures” by M. Skiles.

“The idea of a score, the way I look at it, is to point out or to make the audience aware of the things that can neither be photographed nor said â€” the interior motivation, in other words.

If the man runs, why is he running? Not the mere manifestation of speed.”

Now, here we go. I encourage you to pop in your E.T. DVD and watch it.

The short scene we’ll be looking begins at about 15:04, after E.T. goes running off through the garbage cans, leaving them to roll down the steps as Elliot looks on in wonder.

15:04SCENE: Eliot is looking up at the steps drenched in red light, the door still swinging from E.T.’s hasty departure. His eyes are filled with a sense of wonder after his encounter with E.T.MUSIC: The music comes in gently, the high strings playing a soft, dreamy chord. The music carries over the cut to the shot of Eliot getting on his bike.NOTES: Elliot’s expression shows he is not scared, but curious, with a child’s sense of wonder. He is making the decision to go find E.T. and that takes us over the cut and into the next scene. The music links over the cut as well by starting on that look and leading to him on the bike. The music has a dreamy, floating quality that works perfectly well with Elliot’s intent.

15:11SCENE: Eliot sits on his bike for a second then starts to slowly pedal away from his house.MUSIC: Muted brass play an adventure-like theme, subdued but still with a sense of forward motion.NOTES: This is the start of Elliot’s adventure! But all we see is him sitting on his bike, thinking for a moment then almost hesitantly leaving. Not very dynamic, but dramatically adequate. I suspect that Spielberg knew that these visuals would play with music that showed Elliot’s “interior motivation” as Hugo put it.

15:15SCENE: Eliot goes down the hill, disappearing from view for a moment. This symbolic imagery shows his departure into the unknown, it is also his first time away from home in the film.MUSIC: The music here becomes big, using thick and percussive string chords.This has a very decisive and serious feel to it, almost martial in character.NOTE: This could be seen as a strange scoring choice from John Williams perhaps, but these are visuals that could easily be perceived as “a leisurely stroll on bike” then it’s easy to see how important the music is, but also we must consider that this particular shot, with Elliot disappearing down the hill, is really about him facing possible danger, then the musical choice here explains itself.

15:18SCENE: Elliot going down a large, sandy hill. MUSIC: The music returns here to the initial muted brass adventure theme.NOTE: Not much to say here that has not been said.

15: 23 etc…SCENE: Close UP of Elliot’s hand starting the spread the Reese’s Pieces.MUSIC: One of E.T.s main musical themes comes in and carries us for the next little while.NOTE: The shots of Elliot on his bike served as an introduction to this sequence, and the music also followed this structure, which is an important aspect of film scoring – to highlight form and structure.

Closing comments

When working with a composer, musical decisions like these come from a full understanding on the composer’s part of the director’s intent. If you watch these shots of Elliot on his bike without the music you will see it might not be readily apparent what the intent is.

Sure, upon further scrutiny it might become apparent, but deadlines do not always permit further scrutiny! So make sure that all these wonderfully insightful and creatively stimulating details are clear to the composer before he begins work. You can do that during the spotting session or with a morning phone call.

A few years ago I was working on a short film and the directors (there were two) were working in big companies down in Hollywood, and had worked on some very, very successful films.

So I thought, wow, this is great, these will be great directors to work with!

Well, they had never directed before and this is one of the things they asked. [WARNING: This is an example of what NOT to do!]

I sent a cue with the main theme and I get an email back saying “can you make the melody go up at the end?”

I said sure, I can do that, and I made the melody go up at the end then zipped it along.

An email comes back saying, sorry, we probably weren’t clear, but can you make the melody go up at the end?

I thought I had done that, but perhaps it wasn’t high enough, so I made go a bit higher, sent it along and got the same email back.

Melody. Higher.

I was confused, but the request seemed clear enough and I tried again. Eight times I repeated this process until eventually I called the directors and we figured out they wanted the BASS to go up at the end!

The bass!

Days wasted because of this.

So what is the moral of the story? Discussing musical cues using specific musical language is always dangerous, especially if you are not musically trained. You might think you have the right terminology, but you might not.

It is better instead to speak clearly of the intent of the film or scene as you would an actor, making sure all is clear before composition work gets done.

And, for pity’s sake, if you find that your instructions to the composers do not yield the results intended, don’t keep repeating the same instructions, hoping it will magically give different results!

One of the important uses of music in film is to provide tension and momentum.Â This is especially useful when the tension is in the subtext and not in the visuals or dialogue.

Jurrasic Park are a great example of this.

At 55:27 the character of Dennis Nedry begins the shutting down of the computer systems to allow him to steal the dinosaur embryos. This sequence is dramatically important, but the visuals are somewhat static and intercut with the characters of Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm humorously getting aquainted in the Jeep, oblivious to the danger ahead.

It’s all pretty quiet stuff which requires music to drive it along and give the right tone. The music is percussive, rhythmic and filled with tension, giving this sequence the necessary propulsion and the right sense of dread.

The Jeeps stop, the fences fail, Nedry escapes. It all is important to the plot but the dialogue and visuals are mostly static or slow with benign dialogue, so the music is important here and carries through it all. (This is not a failure on Spielberg’s part, but rather shows understanding of how to use music as part of the story telling.)

And then we cut to the goat at 1:00:21 and the music stops, leaving silence. We know the goat, it lets us know where we are and it also as a foreshadowing tool that lets us know something bad is going to happen. Music is not needed.

There is no music at all during the entire T-Rex attack.

Spielberg and Williams were smart to not put any music here. They knew that the audience was seeing something they had never seen before, a truly believable onscreen T-Rex. The shock of it was made even more intense by the relatively “empty” soundtrack, which must have bee especially powerful in a theater.

And there is context to consider as well. The shot of the goat which starts the T-Tex sequence was preceded by a long stretch of music. Silence makes a bigger impact when it is preceded by lots of sound.

After the T-Rex attack is done, we cut back to the control room with a slow zoom-in to dialogue about lines of code. Not the most exciting stuff. The tension here is in their obliviousness to what is happening outside, the subtext, so the music returns here to keep the tension and momentum going.

As a side note, when adding rhythmic music to a scene, it is always amazing to me how the music changes the tempo of a scene, making it seem to go by much faster.

Bottom line: Music is great at keeping tension and momentum going, especially when there is a subtext of tension that is not necessarily present on screen. Music is not always necessary when there is strong and dramatic on-screen action.

In last week’ s post, Scooby Doo showed us that melody is still an important asset to a production at any level.

One of the challenges is when to present your melodies and when not to. A common fear among directors is that melody will interfere with the dialogue.

Of course it is crucial for the dialogue to be well understood, but melody doesn’t get in the way like you would imagine when you are first listening to a composers demo or when doing the final mix, times when you focus your attention too much on the music.

Here is a recent example.

The great film “Memoirs of a Geisha” opens with a narration, a voice-over by Sayuri as an old woman. Under this voice-over her theme is played on cello with a light wind accompaniment.

The Sayuri theme is beautiful, melodic and distinct, yet it does not interfere with the words. (And music with voice-overs is a particular challenge since the audience does not have the lips and gestures to reinforce the words.)

Ask yourself, did any of you notice the music there when you were first watching the film? Did it detract from the narration? Of course not, since you were listening as audience members.

But now that I have drawn your attention to this, if you were to watch this scene you would listen to the theme more and start focusing on it with a film maker’s ear, and might say “there should be no melody here, I am listening to it instead of the narration.”

What decision would you have made if you had heard this melody as a demo from the composer or during the mixing session?

I asked my wife after she watched that opening scene if she heard the music. She said yes, sure. Did she hear the narration? Well, yeah… of course.

Melody under narration and dialogue works prefectly well. The audience’s mind can take both in simultaneously.

As filmmakers, it is important to listen to the music being put in your film from the audience’s perspective. It is wise to not focus on the music entirely either during a demo presentation or during mixing, but on the dialogue or the action, because that is always where your audience will be focused as well.

And when in doubt, put melody! A good melody makes music more memorable, approachable and likable, all of which can only make your film better.

As a director you have to be a storyteller, yes, but also a leader. And to be a leader who gets the most out of the people he leads, there is nothing better than walking a mile in their shoes.

That doesn’t mean I suggest you have to sit down and compose, but listening to what composers want and need, their desires, what they consider the best working environment for them, understanding those things will go a long way in building a productive and creative working relationship with your composer.

Here is an interview with 5 established composers published in the Hollywood Reporter . A lot of important subjects were discussed, some of which I will address here.

Today I will comment on some answers by Howard Shore and Danny Elfman, which I quote below.

Shore: It’s important to make films in a linear way. It’s the most productive way to do them. You wouldn’t start shooting a film if the script wasn’t finished.

Elfman: It’s a contemporary problem. Thirty, 40 years ago this wouldn’t have happened. It’s something we deal with now that our predecessors didn’t have to. They didn’t have to reconstruct things in the eleventh hour the way they do now.

Shore: It’s a good discussion point, because here is a group of composers sitting here saying that the best way to make good films — which is what we all want to do — is to allow that the postproduction process be linear. It’s like what Danny said: Films used to be made like that, and look at all the great films that were made.

They are talking about the last minute changes that happen now because of the new digital editing revolution. Now everyone can have a say in the final cut and it keeps on going and going and going.

Sometimes the changes are minor and a composer can rework his cue, or the music editor can nip and tuck the music, but if the changes are big enough then the whole cue goes out the window.

During the editing you may not feel the changes are big ones, a few frames cut here and another few added there, no big deal, right? But suddenly none of the hits in the music cue work anymore and it has to be redone!

What these guys mean by a linear postproduction process is that the final cut stays final while the sounds and music are being created.

And the bottom line, is that redoing cues hurts the quality of the music overall, since the energy spent on reworking something that was already done takes away time and energy from music that still needs to be written.

You know how it goes, you read a book and then you go see a movie and the movie is never like you imagined it. You had completely different ideas of what the characters looked like, etc…

A composer reading a script is no different. He/she will surely have a very different ideas than what the director had in mind.

John Williams actually refuses to read scripts, he will only write when he sees the film. The late Jerry Goldsmith was the same. When discussing writing for “Alien” he recalled being in the theater watching a scene and being scared out of his mind, telling himself “it’s just a movie.” And that’s how Jerry liked it, basing his music on that first gut reaction he got from watching the movie as an audience member, not as a composer or film maker.

Furthermore, you know as well as I do, a lot can change between script and the final cut.

Here’s a personal example.

I worked on a feature called “The Impossible Life of Martin Pranks” early on in my career (sadly it was never picked up). I liked the script and started writing as they were shooting without ever seeing any dailies.

When I finally saw the first rough cut, the tone was much more dramatic, emotional and tender than I had envisioned. Actually, I did not interpret the script as being that tender at all, and the director never mentioned anything during our talks either, not that I recall anyway.

So none of the musical ideas I had fit the tone of the movie at all and all that work was wasted. And you know how hard it is to change your mind on something, too! I really liked my ideas!

If I had worked watching dailies instead of the script then that would have been better for sure.

So reading a script is not enough of a basis for music composition, we got that, but can a composer still start writing music before the first rough cut?

I remember Danny Elfman talking about going on the Gotham set of the first Batman and soaking up the Gothic feel of the film. That gave him the information he needed to start writing music with the right feel

So inviting the composer on the set is a good idea, but let’s face it, it all depends on the set. If the set is a simple run-of-the-mill house, it won’t do much to visit!

Visiting the set when the actors play out a crucial scene might be good.

Oh, and I didn’t mention the most important of all: discussions with the director his/her vision for the film.

But remember, first impressions are hard to let go of. Make sure that if your composer gets the right impression of the film right from the get-go, that everything is clear and all will be well.